by Hope Edelman
Kraus, Caroline. Borderlines (2004). The narrator loses her mother to cancer and moves to San Francisco, where she falls under the influence of an unstable female coworker. A story of losing and finding oneself after grief.
Lauck, Jennifer. Blackbird (2000). Seven-year-old Jennifer loses her mother, then her father, and endures additional hardships in the custody of a stepmother who leaves her at a church commune in 1970s Los Angeles.
______. Still Waters (2001). As a teenager and young adult Jennifer investigates her brother’s suicide.
______. Show Me the Way (2004). A collection of essays about parenting as a motherless mother.
Lord, M. G. Astroturf (2005). The author, an eighth-grader when her mother dies of cancer, is raised through adolescence by an engineer father—one of the country’s first rocket scientists. The book is part memoir, part history of the male-dominated Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the characters who sent missions to Mars.
Lyden, Jacki. Daughter of the Queen of Sheba (1997). A National Public Radio journalist tells about her unpredictable childhood with a manic-depressive mother who had episodes of delusional grandeur.
Marin, Pamela. Motherland (2005). The author was fourteen when her mother died of cancer at a Christian Science retreat, 2,000 miles away from the family’s Illinois home. At age twenty-nine, Marin starts dreaming of her mother and embarks on a journalist’s odyssey to piece together the true story of her mother’s life and death.
O’Fallon, Ann, and Margaret Vaillancourt, eds. Kiss Me Goodnight (2005). A collection of stories, poems, and essays by fifty-one women, all of whom were young when their mothers died of various causes, including cancer, suicide, alcoholism, accidents, and the Holocaust.
Pogrebin, Letty. Deborah, Golda, and Me. (1991) An exploration of female Jewish identity, written by an author left motherless at age fifteen.
Saffian, Sarah. Ithaka (1998). Sarah’s adoptive mother dies when Sarah is six. Eighteen years later, she receives a phone call from a woman claiming to be her birth mother.
Schreiber Le Anne. Midstream: The Story of a Mother’s Death and a Daughter’s Renewal (1991). A forty-year-old Manhattan newspaper editor is about to leave New York to move to the country when her beloved mother is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she decides to move in with her instead.
Scofield, Sandra. Occasions of Sin (2004). Raised Catholic in West Texas in the 1950s and 1960s, the author finds her adolescence is disrupted by her mother’s death from kidney disease when she is sixteen.
Steiker, Valerie. The Leopard Hat (2003). The author, who at age twenty loses her mother to cancer, recounts her childhood as the daughter of a beautiful, cultured, and elegant woman, and the special relationship they shared. Set in Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s.
Swander, Mary. Out of This World: A Journey of Healing (1995). The author, motherless since her early twenties, recovers from a near-fatal illness while living among the Amish of Kalona, Iowa.
______. Desert Pilgrim: En Route to Mysticism and Miracles (2003). While a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico, the author learns about alternative forms of healing, reflects on her Catholic childhood, and remembers the mother who died of cancer many years ago.
Yen Mah, Adeline. Falling Leaves (1997). Yen Mah’s mother died during her birth, and the child is considered an ill omen in the family. Raised by her wealthy, indifferent father and his beautiful, cruel second wife in 1950s Shanghai, she endures crushing emotional abuse yet finds solace from a loving aunt. Eventually she immigrates to the United States, where she finds love and becomes a successful doctor.
Novels
Allende, Isabel. Portrait in Sepia. (2001). Aurora del Valle, motherless since birth, tells the story of her remarkable life in a wealthy, powerful Chilean family. A narrative that spans fifty years, picking up where 1999’s Daughter of Fortune, the story of Aurora’s grandmother Eliza, left off.
Berg, Elizabeth. Durable Goods (1993). Eleven-year-old Katie, recently motherless, comes of age with a violent father and older, rebellious sister in early 1960s Texas.
______. Joy School (1998). Katie, now on the cusp of thirteen and recently relocated to Missouri, struggles to make friends; falls in love for the first time; and learns about what holds people together.
Fitch, Janet. White Oleander (1999). Fifteen-year-old Astrid Magnussen endures a succession of Los Angeles foster homes after her single mother, a poet, is imprisoned for poisoning an ex-boyfriend. Made into a 2002 film with Michelle Pfeiffer and Alison Lohman.
Fletcher, Susan. Eve Green (2004). Eve Green was eight when her single mother overdosed in their apartment in Birmingham, England, leaving Eve to live with her grandparents in a remote Welsh town. Now twenty-nine and pregnant, Eve looks back at those years and the characters who helped her emotionally survive.
Gibbons, Kaye. Ellen Foster (1987). Eleven-year-old Ellen tragically loses her mother, survives an abusive father, and relies on her wits and courage to find herself a nurturing home. Set in the American South.
Godwin, Gail. Father Melancholy’s Daughter (1991). Margaret was six when her free-spirited mother took off with a girlhood friend for a vacation from which she never returned. One year later she died. Fifteen years later, Margaret is emotionally attached to her depressed, Episcopalian minister father and struggling to understand her mother’s choice.
Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha (1997). An orphaned nine-year-old girl from a small fishing village in Japan, sold into slavery after her mother’s death, becomes a leading geisha of the 1930s and 1940s.
Gordimer, Nadine. Burger’s Daughter (1979). The orphaned daughter of two white South African activists searches for her own identity, while the government keeps her under watch.
Gordon, Mary. Pearl (2005). Maria Meyers was raised as a Catholic by her single, converted-Jewish father after her mother dies. She’s now a single mother trying to save her adult daughter, Pearl, a political activist in the midst of a hunger strike in Dublin.
Hobhouse, Janet. The Furies (reprinted 2004). Helen is born into a family of idiosyncratic women, all widowed or abandoned by their men. Her mother—lovely, unstable, girlish—sends her to boarding school and later commits suicide in Helen’s home. Believed to be an autobiographical story, in novel form.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees (2004). Motherless since age four, fourteen-year-old Lily Owen runs away from her abusive father to search for clues about her mother’s past. Taking her beloved nanny Rosaleen along on her quest, she lands in the home of the Boatwright sisters, three elderly beekeepers, who take her in. Set in 1960s South Carolina against a backdrop of racism and social tension.
Kincaid, Jamaica. The Autobiography of My Mother (1995). Seventy-year-old Xuela Richardson, whose mother died giving birth to her, narrates the story of her life on the island of Dominica in the West Indies, including the abuse she suffered as a child, her marriage to a European doctor, and her deliberate decision to remain childless.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Dreams (1990). Codi Noline returns to her Arizona hometown after her sister’s death to care for their ailing father. Once there, she must face his reticence, a devastating secret from her motherless adolescence, and the cloudy memory of her mother’s death.
Livesey, Margot. Eva Moves the Furniture (2001). Young Eva McEwen, raised by a father and aunt in a small Scottish town after her mother dies, is periodically visited by two ghostly “companions,” a woman and girl that only she can see. The story follows Eva through nursing school and into adulthood, in the postwar years, until the significance of her visitors becomes clear.
McAll, Alexander. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. (1998-2005). Precious Rambotswe, who lost her mother in a fatal train accident as a baby, opens Botswana’s first private detective agency, specializing in domestic dramas, while encountering a few of her own.
McGowan, Heather. Schooling (2002). Thirteen-year-old Catrine Evans moves with her father from Maine to England to attend boardin
g school after her mother dies. Scapegoated by her class-conscious schoolmates, she develops a relationship with her chemistry teacher, Mr. Gilbert. Written in an experimental style.
Minot, Eliza. The Tiny One (2000). Eight-year-old Via Revere, the youngest child in a large Catholic family, narrates the aftermath of her mother’s sudden death, from a sensitive child’s point of view.
Minot, Susan. Monkeys (1986). Seven siblings in an established New England family mourn the death of their mother in an auto accident in this slender, semiautobiographical first novel.
Morris, Mary. The Night Sky (1997). Ivy Slovak, the single mother of a newborn son, is haunted by memories of her own mother, who abandoned seven-year-old Ivy but took her younger sister.
Nahai, Gina. Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith (1999). Lili’s father sends her from Iran to a boarding school in Los Angeles after her beautiful, mysterious mother—“Roxana the Angel”—sprouts wings and flies off their Teheran balcony one night, disappearing for the next thirteen years. This is also a story, tinged with magical realism, of the Persian diaspora to the United States.
Oates, Joyce Carol. I’ll Take You There (2002). Blamed for her mother’s death, raised by stern grandparents, Anellia enrolls in an upstate New York university in the 1960s, where she joins in a sorority, has an interracial relationship, and eventually leaves to become a writer. An intellectual coming-of-age story.
Pera, Pia. Lo’s Diary. (1999) This controversial book offers an alternative point of view to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. In this version, the motherless Lolita is precocious, manipulative, and self-serving. Translated from the Italian.
Picoult, Jodi. Harvesting the Heart (1995). Paige was only five when her mother left. Now a young mother with a newborn son, she doubts her maternal capacity and sets out to find the mother who abandoned her long ago.
Pietrzyk, Leslie. A Year and a Day. (1994). Fifteen-year-old Alice, living with an eccentric great-aunt and a secretive older brother, comes to terms with her single mother’s unexpected suicide. Set in 1975 small-town Iowa.
Quindlen, Anna. One True Thing (1994). Ellen Gulden leaves her fast-track career in Manhattan to return home and care for her cancer-stricken mother. Then she’s accused of helping her mother die. Made into a 1998 film with Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger.
Resnick, Rachel. Go West Young F*cked Up Chick (2000). Twenty-something Brown University graduate Rebecca Roth moves to the glitz and chaos of Los Angeles to escape the memory of her mother’s suicide.
Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping (1981). Sisters Ruthie and Lucille are raised by a series of eccentric female relatives, including the unconventional Aunt Sylvie, in 1950s Idaho, after their mother dies by suicide. Made into a 1987 movie starring Christine Lahti.
Rossi, Agnes. The Houseguest (2000). Six-year-old Maura learns that her mother has died of tuberculosis and her father, soon to leave Ireland for New Jersey, doesn’t want to raise her. He starts a new life in America, while Maura grows up first with two stern aunts, and then in an Irish boarding school. Loosely based on events from the author’s mother’s life.
Schumacher, Julie. The Body is Water (1999). Twenty-eight-year-old Jane Haus, pregnant and unmarried, returns to her family’s beach house to confront truths about her mother’s life and death, and make peace with her father and sister.
Schwarz, Christina. Drowning Ruth. (2000). Ruth is raised from age three by an aunt and war-wounded father after her mother drowns under mysterious circumstances. A tale of psychological suspense set in Wisconsin against the backdrop of post-World War I America and the flu epidemic that followed.
Shields, Carol. The Stone Diaries (1993). The life story of Daisy Stone Goodwill, motherless since birth, and her descendents spans almost the entire twentieth century. An epic narrative of an ordinary yet inspiring life.
Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres (1991). Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Three sisters, now adults, encounter the long-term effects of early mother loss and childhood abuse in this modern version of King Lear, set on the Iowa prairie. Made into a 1997 film starring Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Straight, Susan. I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots (1992). Fourteen-year-old, pregnant Marietta Cook leaves tiny Pine Gardens, South Carolina, to seek her fortune in Charleston after her mother dies. The story traces her life from 1959 to 1983.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club (1989). After her mother dies, Jing-Mei (“June”) succumbs to her father’s pressure to take her mother’s seat in a weekly Mah jongg game, dubbed “The Joy Luck Club” by its members. From the three other Chinese women, her mother’s best friends, she learns the secrets of her mother’s—and everyone else’s—life in China and the United States. Made into a 1993 film starring Ming-Na Wen and Tamlyn Tomita.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple (1982). Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Celie, motherless since fourteen, is raped by her father, separated from her beloved sister, and married off to the abusive Mister, who needs her to care for his motherless children. But when the flamboyant Shug Avery arrives in town, Celie’s options expand. Written in the African-American vernacular of the turn-of-the-century American South. Made into a 1985 film starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.
Weiner, Jennifer. In Her Shoes (2002). Older sister Rose is a successful, though frumpy, attorney. Younger sister Maggie is a gorgeous, self-centered underachiever. Their manic-depressive mother committed suicide when they were children. After a major falling out, the sisters are brought back together when their maternal grandmother reappears in their lives after a twenty-year absence. Made into a 2005 film starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine.
Williams, Joy. The Quick and the Dead (2002). Three high school girls, motherless for various reasons, meet and pass an idle summer in Arizona in this quirky, insightful book.
Winspear, Jacqueline. The Maisie Dobbs series (2003-2005). Thirteen-year-old Maisie loses her mother and is sent to work as a maid for a wealthy London family in the 1920s. Ten years later, after attending Cambridge and working as a nurse during World War I, she opens a detective agency, through which she encounters mysteries in the present and ghosts from her past.
Young Adult Novels
Baskin, Nora Raleigh. What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows (2002). A sensitive and insightful motherless twelve-year-old grows up with her father and brother in upstate New York, and tries to piece together facts about her mother’s mysterious death when she was a child. Ages 11 and up.
Berry, Liz. Mel (1993). Seventeen-year-old Melody is the daughter of a mentally ill mother in England. Driven almost to the brink of suicide herself, Melody gets a chance to reinvent her life when her mother is institutionalized. Ages 14 and up.
Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks (2005). Four lively motherless sisters, ages four through twelve, and their widowed, botanist father rent a summer cottage on the grounds of a New England estate. They soon meet the adventurous boy and his cold, distant, status-obsessed mother who live there. Ages 9 and up.
Brisson, Pat. Sky Memories (1991). Emily is ten when her single mother is diagnosed with cancer. The child poignantly narrates the story of the next ten months, leading up to her mother’s death. Ages 8 and up.
Cook, Karin. What Girls Learn (1997). Twelve-year-old Tilden, eleven-year-old Elizabeth, and their mother relocate to Atlanta to live with the mother’s boyfriend. Soon after the move, the girls’ mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and dies. Ages 12 and up.
Creech, Sharon. Walk Two Moons (1994). Winner of the 1995 Newbery Medal. Salamanca Tree Hiddle is thirteen when she takes a road trip with her grandparents to Lewiston, Idaho, to look for the mother who disappeared. On the way, she draws from her Native American ancestry to weave a story that helps her cope with what she learns. Ages 11 and up.
DiCamillo, Kate. Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Ten-year-old Opal was only three when her mother left. Now, with her newly adopted dog Winn-Dixie by her side, Opa
l finds the courage to ask her father about what happened. Made into a 2005 movie with Jeff Daniels and Cicely Tyson. Ages 8 and up.
Farmer, Nancy. A Girl Named Disaster (1996). Winner of the 1997 Newbery Medal. Nhamo, an eleven-year-old motherless girl in Mozambique, flees her Shona village to find her father in Zimbabwe, a perilous journey that takes her a year to complete and forces her to rely on survival skills she didn’t know she had. Ages 10 and up.
